


Partners.

by beacon_and_other_crimes



Series: Duck Newton, have you accepted your Destiny? [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast), The Adventure Zone: Amnesty (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Crack Relationships, Crack Treated Seriously, M/M, Mentions of psychosis, Non-Linear Narrative, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, structure inspired by the last five years, this is sad as fuck y'all, this started out as a joke and now has a VERY elaborate plot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 16:35:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18641917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beacon_and_other_crimes/pseuds/beacon_and_other_crimes
Summary: Young Duck Newton. He doesn’t know what he’s gonna do with his life. He’s a stoner, a burnout, he’s kinda amazed he summoned the Give A Fuck energy to finish high school. He made it into a state school but now he’s just spinning his wheels in a Gen Ed program.He doesn’t have many friends when he’s not in his home town and he’s got a tendency to ramble and his roommate is basically never home so it transpires that, yeah, he talks to his sword a lot. His magical talking sword that he keeps in a box under his bed.Old Duck Newton. He doesn't know how much of his "destiny" bullshit was real and how much was his drug-addled mind, but he's too old for bullshit, and he doesn't know how he managed to fuck everything up so completely.OR, "How Duck Newton and Beacon fell desperately in love and violently out of it."





	Partners.

On his thirty-eighth birthday--twenty years after, lonely and high out of his mind, he convinced himself he was some kinda hero--Duck decided that enough was enough. He was two beers down and he couldn’t stop thinking about the shoebox inside of the storage tote under his bed, and the contents of said box. He thought a lot about the contents of that box, truth be told. His feelings on the matter ranged from confusion to anger to grief to embarrassment to--

_Fuck._

He couldn’t do this shit anymore.

He had to get rid of this. He’d gotten rid of everything else--the drugs, the bad hair, the irresponsibility. There was just one little thing tying him to his past. The first few steps of getting rid of it were easy enough; he’d gone through them only to chicken out a hundred times by now. He walked to his bed, kneeled, pulled out the tote, unzipped it. Took out the box. Picked it up.

The shoebox in Duck’s hands was the heaviest thing he’d ever held, he was certain. At the same time, he knew he was being silly--the weird chain inside it was fairly light, all things considered. Still. It was almost as heavy in his hands as it was in his heart, and he knew he was making the right choice as he took the next steps, the ones he’d always chickened out on. He walked to the kitchen, not turning around to put the shoebox, not even thinking about it, definitely not thinking about putting it back and trying to forget with a few more beers, walked into the kitchen, opened his trash can, didn’t think about stopping in his tracks, didn’t think about opening the box, dropped the shoebox in the can like it was nothing to him. It _was_ nothing to him. Obviously. It was just a fucking shoebox, with some weird trinket from his drug-addled youth, and he didn’t have any emotional ties to it.

He continued to tell this to himself as he finished the rest of the beers (there were about four more, but Duck still didn’t really feel anything--he’d had high liquor tolerance since before he was legal), as he laid in bed, staring at the ceiling, and as he woke up from a sleep he didn’t remember falling into with a headache but not a hangover.

He also continued to tell this to himself as he dug the box out of the trash and set it on the counter in frustration. _Wouldn’t want someone findin’ this weird shit in my garbage_.

He _had_ to get rid of this damn thing, but the trash wasn’t an option, it seemed. Nor was just _dumping_ it somewhere, obviously; pollution was a _real problem_.

He sat, staring at the box for longer than he would admit before it occurred to him that he could always just pawn his problem off on someone else. (Not that it was a problem, of course. Obviously. Calling it a problem implied that it was bothersome to Duck, and really, it wasn’t that big of a deal. It was stupid, really.) Duck even thought he had a pretty good idea of who could help him out. He grabbed his keys, the box, and before he could stop himself, the words were out of his mouth--

“Time to ‘git, Beacon.” He immediately winced at having spoken aloud to a sword. No, not a sword. A weird chain. A weird, dumb, inanimate chain whose only magical qualities were a good paint job and mushrooms. He shouldn’t have been fuckin’... _talking to it_. Not again.

If there had been anything magical about it that wasn’t related to drugs and Duck’s imagination, he’d given it ample opportunities to show Duck what was special about it.

But he knew someone who went ape for fake shit. Ned was a hoarder, for sure, and he probably wouldn’t actually do what needed to be done (actually throwing it out, which is what Duck really, truly wanted), but at least it would be out of Duck’s hair. None of his business anymore.

He opened the door and tried to pretend he hadn’t just talked to the not-sword. He continued to do so over the drive to the Cryptonomica. The shoebox was in the front passenger seat, and more than a few times Duck was kind of tempted to open it, maybe touch it one last time. Almost a last farewell to that wild time in his past and all the bullshit it held. But he didn’t. No need to indulge the demons of his past for a second longer than necessary--wasn’t that the point of this?

(And even if Duck wasn’t crazy, what the fuck was there to say that he hadn’t already said? What could he possibly hear that would make things better? The answer to both of those questions was “nothing,” so Duck definitely didn’t bother wondering about it for most of the drive.)

Just as he was _definitely not about to crack_ , he pulled up to the Cryptonomica. The lights were off. _Fuck. Probably shoulda called ahead._ Still, he got out of the car, picking up the shoebox and approaching the front door. If Ned didn’t answer, that would be fine. He’d just put he box back; it wasn’t hurting anyone there, really. He knocked on the door. Ned probably wouldn’t even come. He wasn’t a morning person. He could just go get some coffee and head back to his apartment, really it was--

“Friend Duck! What a surprise!” Ned opened the door with less of a flourish than usual--it was only 10 AM, after all. “You know, the doorbell works, right?”

“Oh, uh, hey, Ned.” Duck was suddenly all too aware of what he was doing, but it was too late to back out now without inviting weird questions that he wouldn’t want to answer. “Yeah, I, uh, didn’t wanna wake ya if you weren’t up yet.”

“Well, lucky for you I didn’t sleep well then!” Ned’s laugh was uncharacteristically mirthless. “How can I help you?”

“Well, there’s not really a uh, a _normal_ way to say this, I guess.” He took a deep breath, but it rattled a bit in his chest. “I got this fuckin, uh, sword type thing? Really it’s more of an elaborate chain, I don’t know really, got it when I was high as fuck back in the eighties and the circumstances are a bit fuzzy.”

Ned gave him a measured stare. “Duck, unless you have something in your vehicle, I believe that’s a shoebox, not a sword.”

“It’s in here.” He held out the box, and in a moment that lasted a lifetime, Ned took it. Opened it. Duck pointedly avoided looking at the box’s contents.

“Oh wow, Duck, you weren’t kidding. This is quite the specimen.”

Duck winced at the turn of phrase. “Yeah, well, I need ya t’get rid of it.”

Ned quirked an eyebrow. “Get _rid_ of it?”

“Yeah.”

“What...exactly does that entail?”

“I don’t fuckin’ care, Ned, pawn it off on a tourist, make it into modern art, melt it down and make a set of kitchen utensils, just get rid of the damn thing.” Duck ran a hand through his hair and looked everywhere that wasn’t the open box, now held low enough for Duck to see it easily if he wanted to. He _didn’t_ want to. Fuck, he didn’t ever want to see him again. It. _Fuck_.

Ned didn’t say anything for a moment, and Duck wasn’t looking at him (looking at him was way too close to looking at Beacon, and if he looked at Beacon he was going to lose his nerve and cave again and this was all for nothing, he’d just be cradling him and crying and begging him to _say something_ and of course he wouldn’t because he wasn’t a _real_ _sword_ let alone a _sentient_ one--) when he said, “If this is that important to you, Duck, I’ll take care of it.”

“It’s really not important,” Duck said, and for a moment he was impressed with how smooth his lie was before remembering that it wasn’t supposed to be a lie.

“If you say so, my dear companion.” Ned shut the box and Duck felt nothing as he tucked it under his arm. “Did you need anything else, or did you just come to ask me to get rid of this unimportant box and its contents?”

Duck felt his face redden. “Uh, just that. Thanks.”

“Any time. Don’t be a stranger!”

The door shut in his face, and he was sure he exchanged the goodbye formalities but he wasn’t focused enough to remember them. He was sitting in his car alone.

It was gone now.

(Beacon was gone.)

Out of his hair.

(Never coming back.)

Not his problem.

(No fixing things now.)

...

Duck laid his head against the steering wheel for a long moment, in which no tears whatsoever were shed, before driving home with vision that wasn’t blurry in the slightest.


End file.
